Small Fuzzy Rabbit

Kensington, February 2019

My friend Marianne’s annual Oscar party always includes a “Best Costume” contest. Though many come to the party, few take the competition seriously. But those who do, take it very seriously.

This year, there was no question of the winner. Marianne’s friend Elsa arrived in truly majestic attire inspired by Queen Anne (as brilliantly portrayed by Olivia Colman) in The Favourite. As a nod to the Queen’s menagerie of pet rabbits, the train of Elsa’a gown was filled with small toy bunnies. Upon her entrance she began tossing the furry favors around the room, dispensing them to her entranced subjects.

I caught one and handed it to T, my beautiful and idiosyncratic girlfriend, as gift.

“I don’t want it,” she said bluntly. Seeing my wounded look she added, “I told you: I’m not interested in things. I’m interested in experiences.”

This is true. For Christmas, she’d taken me to the ballet. My birthday gift was a visit to San Francisco’s bizarre Gregangelo Museum, with its displays of hieroglyphs and aliens. She’s set other boundaries as well. We see each other two nights a week, at most.

Prior to our relationship, T had been following my work— “stalking” me, she says—for years, since she’d read The Size of the World and seen my solo show. “I wanted to know the man behind the myth,” she said.

“Stick with the myth,” I advised. Half-jokingly.

On our first date, we spread out my Tarot deck for a one-card reading. She drew The Lovers. Despite her cool outward persona, the card has proved prophetic. In our intimate encounters, T is generous and responsive. I guess those count as “experiences.”

Most of the women I’ve courted have been creative, sensitive, sometimes volatile. T is stoic and logical; I often compare her to Star Trek’s Mr. Spock. She is sympathetic, but not empathetic. It would not have occurred to her that the gift of the toy rabbit was an effort to forge some kind of sentimental bond between us. Maybe she is capable of such bonds, but perhaps not. We may be as close as we’ll get.

T actually did win one of the contests at that party: She came closest to predicting the Oscar winners. She’d done this entirely by chance, barely looking at the entry form and checking off boxes at random. I may indeed be T’s “favourite,” but there also seems to be something random in the way our lives have intersected. And there may well come a day when, like that cheap toy rabbit, I am ejected from her train.